A round table of Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone knocking their heads together for weeks would have a hard time scripting a more climactic finale as the one scheduled at the Kohl Center tonight.

In one corner, you have the Wisconsin Badgers and second-year head coach Bo Ryan. A team still not taken too seriously at the start of the season despite earning a share of last year’s Big Ten title, and a team deemed by many to be too young to contend with the savvy veteran line-ups of Indiana and Michigan State.

A team with only one starter taller than 6-foot-5 and only one senior to spearhead the Badgers’ youthful attack. That senior being Kirk Penney, one of the most celebrated and polished players in UW history. The only member remaining from Wisconsin’s run to the Final Four three years ago and a player who has since starred on such levels of competition as the Olympics and World Basketball championships for his home country of New Zealand.

Penney, being honored on senior night, playing in his final game at the Kohl Center. An arena in which Wisconsin has not lost a conference home game in nearly two years and is 61-9 in since its inaugural season in 1998.

The game provides a chance for the Badgers to set a school record for regular-season wins (22), and a victory would hurl Penney into a tie for most career wins by a UW player (80).

And this game is also for outright ownership of the Big Ten title. A chance for UW’s second such honor in as many seasons, something that has not been accomplished in Madison since UW won it in 1923 and 1924.

In the other corner sits the Illinois Fighting Illini — a team with an array of parallels to the Wisconsin basketball program.

First, there is third-year head coach Bill Self, who in his first two years guided Illinois to two Big Ten titles and is now looking for a third consecutive. Self and Ryan are two of only nine Big Ten coaches who led their teams to conference championships in their first season with the program.

Then there is Brian Cook, Illinois’ senior star, preseason Big Ten player of the year and the glue that holds the young Illini team together. A team that also plays a plethora of underclassmen and a team that was also dubbed too young to contend for the title.

Illinois freshman Dee Brown has provided athleticism and excitement in an otherwise traditional offensive strategy. For Wisconsin, that accolade belongs to freshman Alando Tucker, who owns the highest vertical leap in UW history and has given new meaning to the phrase “playing bigger than his size.” Tucker, at 6-foot-5, has consistently neutralized opposing teams’ big men all season long.

But despite the emergence of young stars such as Brown and Tucker, both teams still pivot around the play of their experienced seniors.

With only one week remaining, Cook and Penney have each made strong bids for conference player of the year, through both their numbers and inherent value to the team. Cook’s leadership burden is somewhat taken up by deep-ball threat senior Sean Harrington. Penney does not enjoy such a luxury.

The Big Ten title is at stake for the Illini as well. A win would give them a chance to be sole caretakers of it if they can also knock off road-weary Minnesota at home Sunday. If they lose, they can’t even share it.

Now tonight’s game isn’t necessarily going to decide the fate of the season for either team. Both will receive the top seeds in the Big Ten tournament, and both are undoubtedly headed to March’s 64-team Madness.

But the rarity of such a showdown as tonight’s contest is what makes this so special. Seldom do the two teams competing for the Big Ten title meet each other in the final week — or game in UW’s case — to grind it out with one another in deciding the champion. This sort of game hardly takes place in any conference, for that matter.

And even less frequently, with the Big Ten’s unbalanced schedule, does a team have the chance to win the title outright. In a conference traditionally known for teams beating up on each other as the regular season persists, rarely does one team emerge out of the pack as the Big Ten’s elite. The honor in recent years has more often than not been shared.

For Wisconsin, who finally cracked the top 25 Monday for the first time this season, a win will put them into an extremely favorable position when looking ahead towards the NCAA tournament. If the Badgers can finish their Big Ten season 12-4 (22-6 overall), grab the top spot in the conference tournament and win a few games next weekend in Chicago, it is a safe bet they will be rewarded with a No. 6, maybe even No. 5 seed, in the NCAA pool.

A seed starkly different than UW’s traditional eight or nine seed, which sets the team on a collision course with the No. 1 seed in the second round.

But forget about looking that far ahead.

That sort of speculation and mentality has no place in the Kohl Center tonight, when two unlikely candidates scratch and claw with one another for the Big Ten title.

A night in which Wisconsin says good-bye to one of their more storied players in program history in a game as rare as they come in modern Big Ten basketball.

Make no mistake about it; tonight’s game will be worth every Penney.